3of23This lithograph is of the North Point warehouses in 1857. The arrow points to the SeaWall Warehouse. In the lithograph, Seawall is the last building on Sansome Street and the Clipper Ship Hurricane is being unloaded

4of23The SeaWall Warehouse likely in the 1950s.

5of23A classified ad for the SeaWall Warehouse in 1964.Photo: Duke Downey, The Chronicle

6of23The SeaWall Warehouse was featured in a San Francisco at Your Feet column on Oct. 31, 1965.Photo: Joe Rosenthal, The Chronicle

7of23A SeaWall Warehouse ad in 1964 before the company’s bankruptcy and the builing’s demolition.

8of23Demonstrators attached this proclamation to the SeaWall Warehouse on Dec. 30, 1968.Photo: Gordon Peters, The Chronicle

9of23In the SeaWall Warehouse’s window were Nancy Katz and Cora Meek. The negotiators won a delay, preventing the wrecking company from completing the demolition on Dec. 30, 1968.Photo: Gordon Peters, The Chronicle

10of23Coverage of the protests at the SeaWall Warehouse.

11of23John B. Winter of Cleveland Wrecking Co. tries to talk the protesters out of their sit-in on Dec. 30, 1968.Photo: Gordon Peters, The Chronicle

12of23The Western Historical Association decried the proposed demolition of the SeaWall Warehouse, one of the last remaining relics of the Gold Rush era.

13of23A pile of bricks sits in front of the SeaWall Warehouse, which was partially demolished the day before conservationists occupied the building on Dec. 30, 1968.Photo: Art Frisch, The Chronicle

14of23A third of the SeaWall Warehouse had been demolished before the sit-in.Photo: Art Frisch, The Chronicle

15of23A guard watches the partially demolished SeaWall Warehouse in January 1969. The protesters won a delay, but the demolition would be completed Oct. 16, 1969.Photo: Greg Peterson, The Chronicle

It was one of the last surviving buildings from San Francisco’s Gold Rush era, but conservationists’ best efforts couldn’t save it from the wrecking ball.

While I was refiling photos recently I stumbled across the story of the SeaWall Warehouse building. I had never heard of this San Francisco landmark, so I headed down to The Chronicle’s archive to search for photos and articles that hadn’t been seen for years.

The SeaWall was built in 1853 and, according to Chronicle writer Margot Patterson Doss in 1964, “The building began life as the second wharf warehouse to be built in the city, an enterprise of the banking firm of Adams & Co., which folded with a run in the panic of 1855. For many years it was owned by W.C. Coleman, leader of the Vigilance movement of 1856, who called it the North Point Dock Warehouse.” I turned up a photo of an 1857 lithograph in our archive that showed the Clipper ship Hurricane being unloaded alongside the building. It also served as a hub for immigrants for decades.

One hundred years later, the SeaWall was under siege. In the 1960s, it was the largest remaining building of its kind in the city from the mid-1800s, but it had been turned into a home for a retailer selling antiques and imports. Plans were in place to tear down the warehouse to make way for the International Market Center, an eight-square-block commercial development meant to revolutionize the waterfront.

The tear-down started Dec. 27, 1968, but three days later, workers from the Cleveland Wrecking Co. arrived at the site to find the building had been taken over by a dozen sit-in protesters who called themselves the Fort SeaWall Defense Garrison.

Nancy Katz, wife of a director of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Association, was one of the first to arrive. She said, “It’s a matter of principle. ... Nobody really organized the sit-in. We just started calling each other on the phone Sunday night and here we are.”

The protest ended with an agreement to delay demolition of the rest of the building until the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board could meet to consider a plan to save the facade.

The Save the SeaWall members began raising money to relocate the building’s facade, and they had powerful supporters. Assemblyman John L. Burton weighed in, saying, “Demolition of the historic SeaWall Warehouse was the ‘opening volley’ in a campaign by commercial interests to take over the Northern Waterfront.” Dr. Malcolm Watkins, curator of the Smithsonian Institution, added, “SeaWall is a significant rare example of San Francisco Gold Rush architecture. Destroy it, and you destroy something of the city’s essence.”

By October 1969, the Save the SeaWall group had proposed to move the original bricks and windows to another location and rebuild, but time had run out. The remaining facade was found to be dangerous, and the developers were told by San Francisco officials that if they did not demolish the building, the city would.

The plan for the International Market Center fell through, and, eventually, condominiums were built on the site of the SeaWall Warehouse, which for more than 115 years had stood as brick after brick of San Francisco history.

Bill Van Niekerken is the library director of The San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. In his weekly column, From the Archive, he explores the depths of The Chronicle’s vast photography archive in search of interesting historical tales related to the city by the bay.

Bill Van Niekerken is the Library Director of the San Francisco Chronicle. He does research for reporters and editors and manages the photos, negatives and text archives. He has a weekly column “From the Archive”, that focuses on photo coverage of historic events. For this column Bill scans and publishes 20-30 images from photos and negatives that haven’t been seen in many years.

Bill started working at the Mercury News in 1980, when nothing in news libraries was digital. Research was done using paper clippings, and cameras shot film. He moved to the Chronicle in 1985, just as the library was beginning their digital text archive.